Goodreads Librarians Group discussion
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Amazon is going away as a data source
Great news re Createspace. Those ones are ghastly when it comes to finding other sources.
Just a note - most of the books on my shelves that are still at risk for deletion are giveaways that I didn't read. I'm not going to worry about them - and your FAQ and (pending?) email to Authors should help.But in case there's a way to batch rescue books that you've had listed in that special giveaways database, or whatever, I shared. :)
What does it mean when a book has an image, but the source for the image is "not set"? Is that image in danger of vanishing?
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Maybe this has already been addressed but with 900+ comments on this thread, I can't find it.I received an email with the list of my books that need to be rescued, and they are all UK editions. Is this somehow going to be addressed, or do I have to rescue them? And is this going to be a problem in the future - a lack of UK editions on the list of available copies?
Two questions:(1) When I rescue a book by changing the edition, it tells me that I've changed the edition but the book still appears on my rescue list. Was it really rescued? Why is it still on the list?
(2) What happens with Amazon and Kindle edition books? I've only read ebooks for the last 3 years...which are Amazon Kindle books. [Edited to Add: Just saw the update on Kindle editions. Thanks!]
I realized I had some of the books on my to be rescued list, in my possession, so I thought I'd try to rescue them. However, I'm new to this librarian thing and am afraid I may have messed up. Could someone check this for me. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11...I didn't want to change another librarians work, I just wanted to add my edition.
Thanks for your help and hope I don't sound too stupid.
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(1) When I rescue a book by changing the edition, it tells me that I've changed the edition but the book still appears on my rescue list."
The rescue list has a cache of several hours. To check if a book is rescued, best to go to the editions page. If you expand all, you can see the source for each edition. If you successfully rescued it, your name should appear as the source. If not, it will still show Amazon.
rivka wrote: "Ann (Noumena12) wrote: "To check if a book is rescued, best to go to the editions page. If you expand all, you can see the source for each edition. If you successfully rescued it, your name should appear as the source. If not, it will still show Amazon. "Helpful info. Thanks. Rivka.
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Hmm. I don't like that a lot of my books at risk to be merged will become e-books. I guess I can find them eventually and manually add my editions back for the books I own or those I can find at the library.
Huzzah, just about everything of mine is rescued except for a handful of out of print books and everything published by Titan Books (a UK publisher)! So I'm just crossing my fingers that those UK sources come through by the end of the month....
Maria wrote: "Trikis, I'm not sure GR had a lot of choice. As far as I've been able to understand, it's Amazon who is imposing this deadline on GR rather than the other way around. Assuming that the deadline was..."Ok, now that I've read Patrick's post on the FAQ (it was hard to find before) and I cought up with the facts that should have been mentioned from the start,
I gotta say Amazon made the awful deadline move. I still believe GR could have handled it better and that the method for saving books is painfully tedious and time consuming.
In my particular case I went throught my hole library, added all books to the database, and made sure that the only data remaining from Amazon was correct, so there should be an easier way to confirm all this data. I imagine there are some legal reasons for not copying it from Amazon, but an author's name is not exactly DRM worthy...
Okay, done with my rescues. I am really trying to not rant on the sheer stupidity of the current copyright system - but I guess that would be unproductive at this time. Still, the fact that I can see publicly available details on the internet, and not freely use them ... gwaah.
Much as I love the updating by other sources, would just like to point out that open library overwrote the page numbers I put in for a book back in 2009; it suddenly lost 50 pages, and I wouldn't have known except it was still on the merge list and I went looking back through the change log. I've already fixed it but in case you want to look.... and yes I did get the book down from my shelves :)http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62...
Actually here is a question generated from something mentioned above about Audible. In the formats listed for audio we don't have digital downloads. Certainly the majority of titles carried by Audible are ones they have licences to carry via original publishers Recorded Books Tantor etc which began their life as CDs but they also do have their own labels such as Audible Frontiers that only exist as digital.
Just found another problem which I am assuming is to do with the updates - about 10+ different books of Catherine Gaskin have been combined, see here http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18...I haven't fixed this as I assume you need to see it. Just let me know if you want me to fix it, later.
I'd been hoping that the pages goodreads gets their data from now would clear up the messy titles that came from amazon sometimes, but apparently the opposite happens too, like here:open library updated the book SARA DANE. by Catherine Gaskin
title: 'Sara Dane' to 'SARA DANE.'
Yep, I cleared up another one, exactly the same Sandi.
In the Librarian Edits page, when a source is "not set", what does that mean? Is the field at risk?Here: http://www.goodreads.com/book/edits/1...
Now, I'm pretty sure (not 100% sure but sort of) I copied the description from the publisher's page some time ago (I didn't have to re-enter it to rescue the book): certainly it's not from Amazon, as there's no description for this book there. Still, the source is "not set": just a bug? Or do all non-Amazon data entered before the rescue thing have "non set" as source?
No Moloch, Rivka said it wasn't at risk, just that the db couldn't determine who to attribute it to.
Sandra wrote: "No Moloch, Rivka said it wasn't at risk, just that the db couldn't determine who to attribute it to."Thanks, I didn't notice it was already addressed.
I did go through this whole thread, rather quickly given the number of posts, so I might have missed it if someone else has mentioned it, sorry if this is a repetition, but I think there's a little problem...Just received the email about the "rescue" thing, and since I had only 3 books in the list, all British editions, went at it straightaway.
All went fine, the books were rescued, but checking the edits list afterwards, I realised I have actually CHANGED some of the details.
Here's an example:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/90...
http://www.goodreads.com/book/edits/9...
Now, I don't think I did terribly wrong in changing the title from "Get Real: A Dortmunder Novel" to plain "Get Real", the "original" entry was a bit of an overkill, since the book is already correctly listed as belonging to the Dortmunder series, and same goes from changing the publisher from "Quercus Publishing Plc" to "Quercus", and as for the page count changed from 288 to 278, well, that was plain wrong to start with so I actually corrected it, but the point is, since the rescue form gives blank fields, I DON'T KNOW that I'm actually editing existing data, and while I still believe no "damage" was done in this case, this might still annoy some other librarian or member who originally submitted the data with more detail than I, personally, care for...
Well, guess it's too late now, but it would help, methinks, if the "rescuers" were warned when existing data is being modified.
This whole business is annoying, though... Amazon is one of the very few sources that care for precise publication dates of each edition/reprint, not even the publishers and the authors themselves, in most cases, seem to give a fig about that in their own websites...
Gomez, the only data being overwritten is that coming from Amazon, so you'll never overwrite another librarian's work.
Still working to save all my books, but assuming I achieve this and get on to others one thing that would be useful is to be able to filter the list of books to be saved by publisher. That way it would be possible to go through the list cross-referencing with one publisher catalogue at a time.
Gomez, I personally think you've improved those books, and I would of made the same edits, so you haven't done anything wrong. Your job in rescuing the books is not to confirm existing information but to provide correct information and you've done that.
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12... - I'm sure this should be a kindle edition but it says that it is at risk.
Sandra...Your job in rescuing the books is not to confirm existing information but to provide correct information and you've done that.
Well, of course I volunteered to be a Librarian, so I'm ready to use some of my spare time to help, but I still think a LOT of such spare time, mine and others, could have been saved if the rescue forms contained the original data to be either confirmed or corrected.
I think in most cases we're just replacing Amazon's data with the VERY SAME, since it was mostly correct to start with, except we have to type it in all over again, in order to please some bureaucratic minds at Amazon...
Well, never mind... I've been doing this for well over a decade, on GoodReads and other similar sites and communities, and re-indexing books time and time again seems to be a never ending job anyway :)
Sandra wrote: "Gem H, it is an ebook, not kindle.http://www.thebookseller.com/news/ebu..."
Ooh I'm a muppet. Please ignore me. I'll go and look at the pretty shapes in the corner :D
No Gem, it's the first time I see an ebook marked as "Digital". Hurrah for Amazon *sigh*
Actually Ebury is part of Random House, nothing to do with Amazon.
Yes, but amazon.com is the responsible of "Digital" format.
This book needs to be rescued: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21... but I've got problem with it. The shorter ISBN number (8389755734) is from this edition but the longest one (9788370065546) is from the other (http://alpha.bn.org.pl/search~S5*pol/...). I can't correct the longest ISBN number and I don't know how to fix this situation.
OK I've fixed the first one, you'll still need to save it and create the 2nd one. Better someone Polish speaking do that :)
Ok, I'll do it. Thanks :)I've got the similar problem with this book: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19.... It has only the short ISBN number (8373898980). The longest one is from another edition (http://alpha.bn.org.pl/search~S5*pol/...).
I hate to bring this up again, but is there going to be any way that we (GR librarians) are going to be able to click on GR friends' icons etc. to be able to view a specific list of their own books that require rescuing. Right now, the only way to do this is to actually weed through friends' bookshelves book by book (and that takes way way too long, especially for friends that have lots of books shelved).
Gomez wrote: "I think in most cases we're just replacing Amazon's data with the VERY SAME, since it was mostly correct to start with, except we have to type it in all over again, in order to please some bureaucratic minds at Amazon..."I've been opening two browser tabs for each GR book to be saved, and copy/pasting whenever the data from Amazon was the same as the book in hand*. Saved me quite a bit of keyboard tapping, especially when I had to hold the physical book open with my left and type/click with my right.
And yes, I did discover errors with the Amazon data which I hope I corrected properly.
*In the case of books no longer in my possession, I had recourse to my records. Some years ago I started keeping track of basic book data - by hand entering them in a paper notebook - for books that I borrowed or gave away. All that effort proved to be very handy in rescuing books now.
Unfortunately I recorded only title/author/translator/date of copyright/date of publication/publisher/website and so many of the books I saved but are no longer in my possession are without page count.
Gundula wrote: "I hate to bring this up again, but is there going to be any way that we (GR librarians) are going to be able to click on GR friends' icons etc. to be able to view a specific list of their own books..."
message 911:
"Gundula wrote: "Is there a way for librarian's to be able to get a list of books that need rescuing for their individual GR friends?"
Not currently. I think someone was looking into whether this could be done without too much trouble, so stay tuned."
message 911:
"Gundula wrote: "Is there a way for librarian's to be able to get a list of books that need rescuing for their individual GR friends?"
Not currently. I think someone was looking into whether this could be done without too much trouble, so stay tuned."
Okay. A bit late but I'm on it! I checked the link and only 1 of my books needed rescuing which I have now done!Judy, South Africa
Lucky You... I still have 800+ to rescue... x_x
Sandra wrote: "OK Fixed, do the same as before :)"Thanks. Done :)
Gundula wrote: "I hate to bring this up again, but is there going to be any way that we (GR librarians) are going to be able to click on GR friends' icons etc. to be able to view a specific list of their own books..."I'd really like this too. Gundula and I have a mutual friend whose vision is too poor to do book rescuing of her own books.
The master list of books to be rescued isn't useful to me as all I can see on it are tons or manga/foreign language/other stuff I know nothing about and would only screw up. I'd like to help, but can't see a way to find the sorts of books I'm confident saving.
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Createspace books will be disappearing from the rescue list later tonight or early tomorrow. We are getting a feed from Amazon for those.
I have posted an FAQ thread specifically for authors in the Author Feedback group. I will cross-post the link the Librarians FAQ thread.